


Alone and Free

by librariankiss



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 14:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4879570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/librariankiss/pseuds/librariankiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Westergaard isn't afraid of anything. Except for Hans. Hans Westergaard is a little afraid of everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone and Free

**Author's Note:**

> This is just one of those little fics that comes to me in the middle of the night an refuses to leave me alone. I just had to type it up straight away. Hey, at least my insomnia led to something productive this time around, I guess. So here, have a Hans one shot. It's actually the first fic that I'm posting on my LJ so I'm a little nervous about it. But even so, I hope you like it!  
> Oh, and for updates on my fics as well as the thoughts my brain comes out with, be sure to follow @librariankiss on Twitter.  
> ~ Kiss x

Hans Westergaard is no stranger to the sort of feelings that set his blood alight, to the curling of fear in his gut that could once have him blinking in a futile battle to stop the tears or gagging with the urge to choke down the vomit that threatened. The prince knows all too well that feeling of dread that the sound of someone approaching his room at night, and that vibrant buzzing in his head at the loud, oddly guttural lectures and criticisms that would come from his father when he couldn't swing a sword right or was just a little too close to crying after a scrap with one of his brothers. He could recite all the memories, all the recurring nightmares, and say without thinking how many scars itched on his hand from having to drive it against splinters until it was raw because a Westergaard isn't afraid of anything.

Except for Hans Westergaard. Hans Westergaard is a little afraid of everything. He's afraid of the colour of his father's eyes for all the times the man has looked at him in disappointment, in anger. He's afraid of the sound that Sitron makes when someone enters the stable in case that someone is one of his brothers. And he's point blank terrified of that old splintered table that makes phantom blood coat his fingers and soak through his gloves. Sometimes, he doesn't even simply  _feel_ that warm blood. Sometimes he swears he can see it. And he would take the gloves off, he would, but seeing the scars is worse. They, at least, are really there.

On the night that Hans runs away from his punishment, he is near the most scared that he's ever been, And to Hans it is almost funny, in a sick sort of way, because the last time that he fled, when he fled to Queen Elsa's kingdom, he was able to convince himself that he was the victim. This time, however, he can't kid himself. But he also can't wake up one more day with his teeth on edge, with his heart tight and twisted in his ribcage and struggling to beat. He can't go one more day with that phantom blood he endlessly has to tell himself isn't wetting his gloves, not really.

So, as is his way, when Hans sees an opportunity he grabs it. In the cool cover of night when he celebrates that he can no longer see his hollowing face in the mirror, he changes in the darkness of his cold and stinking (not childhood, he's been moved) room near the stables into clothes that will go unnoticed and is stepping quietly over the stable floor in minutes, navigating despite the gloom because of how much time he's spent in there over the years. Yes, there are guards around the palace, but they can't be everywhere at once and Hans knows their patrol routes like the scars on his hands.

Sitron, the best and only friend Hans can say he's known, is silent when the prince removes him from the stable. By leading him over the grassy parts of the palace grounds, the two are quiet enough to go unnoticed. Thank the stars. Before long, Hans finds it. Even in the dark he can locate that one breach in the palace walls that no one is supposed to know about, but he has been using since boyhood. It is an ever growing hole in a crumbling section of wall behind an overgrown mess which Hans has always referred to as the Wild Bit. On the other side of that bit of wall, the forest. Hans leads Sitron through the gap--just big enough--and the two are away.

And yes, Hans is still afraid, but so much of him wants to believe that he won't be if he can just get far enough away from the royals who were never really his family, and from the palace that was never really his home.


End file.
